A Terrible Temptation: A Story of To-Day
strict confidence respecting Reginald.
Rolfe listened and sympathized, and knit his brow, and asked time to
consider what he had heard, and also to study the boy for himself.
He angled for him next day accordingly. A little table was taken out on
the lawn, and presently Mr. Rolfe issued forth in a uniform suit of
dark blue flannel and a sombrero hat, and set to work writing a novel
in the sun.
Reginald in due course descried this figure, and it smacked so of that
Bohemia to which his own soul belonged that he was attracted thereby,
but made his approaches stealthily, like a little cat.
Presently a fiddle went off behind a tree, so close that the novelist
leaped out of his seat with an eldrich screech; for he had long ago
forgotten all about Mr. Reginald, and, when he got heated in this kind
of composition, any sudden sound seemed to his tense nerves and boiling
brain about ten times as loud as it really was.
Having relieved himself with a yell, he sat down with the mien of a
martyr expecting tortures; but he was most agreeably disappointed; the
little monster played an English melody, and played it in tune. This
done, he whistled a quick tune, and played a slow second to it in
perfect harmony; this done, he whistled the second part and played the
quick treble--a very simple feat, but still ingenious for a boy, and
new to his hearer.
“Bravo! bravo!” cried Rolfe, with all his heart,
Mr. Reginald emerged, radiant with vanity. “You are like me, Mr.
Writer,” said he; “you don't like to be cooped up in-doors.”
“I wish I could play the fiddle like you, my fine fellow.”
“Ah, you can't do that all in a minute; see the time I have been at
it.”
“Ah, to be sure, I forgot your antiquity.”
“And it isn't the time only; it's giving your mind to it, old chap.”
“What, you don't give your mind to your books, then, as you do to your
fiddle, _young gentleman?”_
“Not such a flat. Why, lookee here, governor, if you go and give your
mind to a thing you don't like, it's always time wasted, because some
other chap, that does like it, will beat you, and what's the use
working for to be beat?”
“'For' is redundant,” objected Rolfe.
“But if you stick hard to the things you like, you do 'em downright
well. But old people are such fools, they always drive you the wrong
way. They make the gals play music six hours a day, and you might as
well set the hen bullfinches to pipe. Look at the gals as come here,
how they rattle up and down the piano, and can't make it sing a morsel.
Why, they _couldn't_ rattle like that, if they'd music in their skins,
d--n 'em; and they drive me to those stupid books, because I'm all for
music and moonshine. Can you keep a secret?”
“As the tomb.”
“Well, then, I can do plenty of things well, besides fiddling; I can
set a wire with any poacher in the parish. I have caught plenty of our
old man's hares in my time; and it takes a workman to set a wire as it
should be. Show me a wire, and I'll tell you whether it was Hudson, or
Whitbeck, or Squinting Jack, or who it was that set it. I know all
their work that walks by moonlight hereabouts.”
“This is criticism; a science; I prefer art; play me another tune, my
bold Bohemian.”
“Ah, I thought I should catch ye with my fiddle. You're not such a muff
as the others, old 'un, not by a long chalk. Hang me if I won't give ye
'Ireland's music,' and I've sworn never to waste that on a fool.”
He played the old Irish air so simply and tunably that Rolfe leaned
back in his chair, with half closed eyes, in soft voluptuous ecstasy.
The youngster watched him with his coal-black eye.
“I like you,” said he, “better than I thought I should, a precious
sight.”
“Highly flattered.”
“Come with me, and hear my nurse sing it.”
“What, and leave my novel?”
“Oh, bother your novel.”
“And so I will. That will be tit for tat; it has bothered me. Lead on,
Bohemian bold.”
The boy took him, over hedge and ditch, the short-cut to Meyrick's
farm; and caught Mrs. Meyrick, and said she must sing “Ireland's music”
to Rolfe the writer.
Mrs. Meyrick apologized for her dress, and affected shyness about
singing: Mr. Reginald stared at first, then let her know that, if she
was going to be affected like the girls that came to the Hall, he
should hate her, as he did them, and this he confirmed with a naughty
word.
Thus threatened, she came to book, and sang Ireland's melody in a low,
rich, sonorous voice; Reginald played a second; the harmony was so
perfect and strong that certain glass candelabra on the mantel-piece
rang loudly, and the drops vibrated. Then he made her sing the second,
and he took the treble with his violin; and he wound up by throwing in
a third part himself, a sort of countertenor, his own voice being much
higher than the woman's.
The tears stood in Rolfe's eyes. “Well,” said he, “you have got the
soul of music, you two. I could listen to you 'From morn till noon,
from noon till dewy eve.'”
As they returned to Huntercombe, this mercurial youth went off at a
tangent, and Rolfe saw him no more.
He wrote in peace, and walked about between the heats.
Just before dinner-time the screams of women were heard hard by, and
the writer hurried to the place in time to see Mr. Basset hanging by
the shoulder from the branch of a tree, about twenty feet from the
ground.
Rolfe hallooed, as he ran, to the women, to fetch blankets to catch
him, and got under the tree, determined to try and catch him in his
arms, if necessary; but he encouraged the boy to hold on.
“All right, governor,” said the boy, in a quavering voice.
It was very near the kitchen; maids and men poured out with blankets;
eight people held one, under Rolfe's direction, and down came Mr.
Bassett in a semicircle, and bounded up again off the blanket, like an
India-rubber ball.
His quick mind recovered courage the moment he touched wool.
“Crikey! that's jolly,” said he; “give me another toss or two.”
“Oh no! no!” said a good-natured maid. “Take an' put him to bed right
off, poor dear.”
“Hold your tongue, ye bitch,” said young hopeful; “if ye don't toss me,
I'll turn ye all off, as soon as ever the old un kicks the bucket.”
Thus menaced, they thought it prudent to toss him; but, at the third
toss, he yelled out, “Oh! oh! oh! I'm all wet; it's blood! I'm dead!”
Then they examined, and found his arm was severely lacerated by an old
nail that had been driven into the tree, and it had torn the flesh in
his fall: he was covered with blood, the sight of which quenched his
manly spirit, and he began to howl.
“Old linen rag, warm water, and a bottle of champagne,” shouted Rolfe:
the servants flew.
Rolfe dressed and bandaged the wound for him, and then he felt faint:
the champagne soon set that right; and then he wanted to get drunk,
alleging, as a reason, that he had not been drunk for this two months.
Sir Charles was told of the accident, and was distressed by it, and
also by the cause.
“Rolfe,” said he, sorrowfully, “there is a ring-dove's nest on that
tree: she and hers have built there in peace and safety for a hundred
years, and cooed about the place. My unhappy boy was climbing the tree
to take the young, after solemnly promising me he never would: that is
the bitter truth. What shall I do with the young barbarian?”
He sighed, and Lady Bassett echoed the sigh.
Said Rolfe, “The young barbarian, as you call him, has disarmed me: he
plays the fiddle like a civilized angel.”
“Oh, Mr. Rolfe!”
“What, you his mother, and not found that out yet? Oh yes, he has a
heaven-born genius for music.”
Rolfe then related the musical feats of the urchin.
Sir Charles begged to observe that this talent would go a very little
way toward fitting him to succeed his father and keep up the credit of
an ancient family.
“Dear Charles, Mr. Rolfe knows that; but it is like him to make the
best of things, to encourage us. But what do you think of him, on the
whole, Mr. Rolfe? has Sir Charles more to hope or to fear?”
“Give me another day or two to study him,” said Rolfe.
That night there was a loud alarm. Mr. Bassett was running about the
veranda in his night-dress.
They caught him and got him to bed, and Rolfe said it was fever; and,
with the assistance of Sir Charles and a footman, laid him between two
towels steeped in tepid water, then drew blankets tight over him, and,
in short, packed him.
“Ah!” said he, complacently; “I say, give me a drink of moonshine, old
chap.”
“I'll give you a bucketful,” said Rolfe; then, with the servant's help,
took his little bed and put it close to the window; the moonlight
streamed in on the boy's face, his great black eyes glittered in it. He
was diabolically beautiful. “Kiss me, moonshine,” said he; “I like to
wash in you.”
Next day he was, apparently, quite well, and certainly ripe for fresh
mischief. Rolfe studied him, and, the evening before he went, gave Sir
Charles and Lady Bassett his opinion, but not with his usual alacrity;
a weight seemed to hang on him, and, more than once, his voice
trembled.
“I shall tell you,” said he, “what I see--what I foresee--and then,
with great diffidence, what I advise.
“I see--what naturalists call a reversion in race, a boy who resembles
in color and features neither of his parents, and, indeed, bears little
resemblance to any of the races that have inhabited England since
history was written. He suggests rather some Oriental type.”
Sir Charles turned round in his chair, with a sigh, and said, “We are
to have a romance, it seems.”
Lady Bassett stared with all her eyes, and began to change color.
The theorist continued, with perfect composure, “I don't undertake to
account for it with any precision. How can I? Perhaps there is Moorish
blood in your family, and here it has revived; you look incredulous,
but there are plenty of examples, ay, and stronger than this: every
child that is born resembles some progenitor; how then do you account
for Julia Pastrana, a young lady who dined with me last week, and sang
me 'Ah perdona,' rather feebly, in the evening? Bust and figure like
any other lady, hand exquisite, arms neatly turned, but with long,
silky hair from the elbow to the wrist. Face, ugh! forehead made of
black leather, eyes all pupil, nose an excrescence, chin pure monkey,
face all covered with hair; briefly, a type extinct ten thousand years
before Adam, yet it could revive at this time of day. Compared with La
Pastrana, and many much weaker examples of antiquity revived, that I
have seen, your Mauritanian son is no great marvel, after all.”
“This is a _little_ too far-fetched,” said Sir Charles, satirically;
“Bella's father was a very dark man, and it is a tradition in our
family that all the Bassetts were as black as ink till they married
with you Rolfes, in the year 1684.”
“Oho!” said Rolfe, “is it so? See how discussion brings out things.”
“And then,” said Lady Bassett, “Charles dear, tell Mr. Rolfe what I
think.”
“Ay, do,” said Rolfe; “that will be a new form of circumlocution.”
Sir Charles complied, with a smile. “Lady Bassett's theory is, that
children derive their nature quite as much from their wet-nurses as
from their parents, and she thinks the faults we deplore in Reginald
are to be traced to his nurse; by-the-by, she is a dark woman too.”
“Well,” said Rolfe, “there's a good deal of truth in that, as far as
regards the disposition. But I never heard color so accounted for; yet
why not? It has been proved that the very bones of young animals can be
colored pink, by feeding them on milk so colored.”
“There!” said Lady Bassett.
“But no nurse could give your son a color which is not her own. I have
seen the woman; she is only a dark Englishwoman. Her arms were